"--I don't know whether that's a great idea or a terrible one."

"That's what Augury is for!"

"What's the Celestial Codex?"

"Have Outsiders been explained to you yet?"

"Are those the things we aren't supposed to look at?"

"They sure are! So, Outsiders are a category of beings corrupted by gods from beyond the far edges of the known hypersphere of planes, which want, as far as we can tell, to crack open reality as we know it and consume all that lies within, sort of like your mals only on a much bigger scale. Just perceiving Outsider stuff has a chance of involuntarily corrupting people, although the Masquerade protects people who don't know what's going on, and witches can cultivate a resistance. Outsider-corrupted witches are the single greatest threat to existence and literally everybody will band together to combat an outsider incursion, on account of people generally like existing. --For values of 'everybody' that do not mean every individual person, but persons from any conceivable faction, ideology, or morality. Anyway. Awhile ago, a deity who may or may not be the Abrahamic God managed to pull off an event called the 'Celestial Code' for reasons I do not fully grok, and gave forty-two powerful Outsider-corrupted witches the option to be purified of the influence of the Far Gods, while still keeping all the nifty powers that their corruption had gained them. Or possibly it was more than forty-two and nobody ever admitted anything about the ones who refused, that's also plausible. Also for reasons they have to follow the biblical Ten Commandments now."

"...huh. My understanding of the Bible comes from a 'the Bible as Literature" course I took sophomore year so I'm not sure what I should be imagining as the upshot there."

"Well, the relevant part is that they are not cognitohazardous to be around, and they have Outsider powers, including--I don't know all the details but there's some stuff about amorphousness and being able to regenerate from only a single cell and not needing any kind of biological reality."

"Gosh. I could see that being protective against a maw-mouth maybe? If you like, left a cell behind in advance somewhere safe."

"If they shalt not kill does that apply to... killing maw-mouths... whose victims are sort of still alive in there."

"--No, that part I read about, it's thou shalt not murder, things like mercy-killing victims of horrendous torment are probably allowed, killing people in self-defense and defense of others are."

"Oh, okay. That's good then."

"In point of fact they were pretty explicitly instructed to kill the heck out of non-purified Outsider stuff."

"What is the - gods situation, here? We don't have those."

"Gods...exist. And have varying degrees of power. I'm a warlock, and my patron is a minor fertility goddess who mostly wants people to have orgasms about her. Gods dwell in the Divine Sphere, one of the hyperspheres of reality, and they administer afterlives."

"...gosh. Okay. So while there is at least someone posing as the Abrahamic God it's definitely not a monotheism situation."

"Right."

"Sounds awkward for the Abrahamics."

Shrug. "I'm a pagan fertility priestess, I'm all set." 

"The Watchers seem to do alright. I have no idea how the Celestial Codex are taking it."

"Watchers?"

(Aadhya sets about disassembling the sirenspider.)

"Oh, they're the guys who operate the chapel, the ones who recruited from both sides of the Crusades? And that was what prompted you to start asking about immortality?"

"Immortality does sound lovely."

"Did the person you went to talk to say anything about getting ahold of our families so they know we are not dead?"